A newly surfaced surveillance video from the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s death shows prison guards casually loitering at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan just feet away from the cell where he killed himself.According to video found in a repository of recently released DOJ documents, corrections officers Tovah Noel and Michael Thomas were seen relaxing in front of the officer station in the special housing unit at about 3:15 p.m., both writing on a piece of paper, pacing back and forth and talking on the phone instead of their mandatory 3 a.m. rounds.According to the prison’s layout, Epstein was in the first cell of the block, just a few feet up a short set of stairs behind the officer’s station in the ninth-floor L tier wing.The Justice Department said it is believed that Epstein killed himself between 10:30 p.m. on August 9, the last time Noel, who was working a double shift, checked on the inmates, and 6:30 a.m. on August 10, when Noel and Thomas discovered his lifeless body while serving breakfast to the inmates.DOJ documents revealed that the guards apparently ignored bright-orange warnings and reminders that the officer in charge of the special housing unit had posted on their computers. The notes reminded everyone that Epstein was away from suicide, requiring a bunkmate and regular check-ins at all times.“By God, a mandatory (sic) round should be conducted on Epstein every 30 minutes!!!” Read an order.The SHU boss, Lt. Roberto Grijalva, later told DOJ investigators, “I put it next to the computer. It was just something between us, saying, make sure the rounds are conducted and he has a bunkie near him at all times. It’s bright orange paper and black writing.”Grijalva said he left the instructions “hanging on the PC, right next to the screen” on August 9 at 2 a.m. shortly before he went home for the weekend.He said, “Whoever was there saw it – saw that paper. On Monday, I came in and that paper was no longer there.”Grijalva said that around 8 a.m. on August 9, he brought down Epstein and his cellmate, convicted drug dealer Efrain Reyes. Epstein had been meeting with his lawyers all day, and Reyes had all his stuff, and was presumably on his way home.“When I walked them to the door, I said, ‘You’re going to get a bunkie,'” Grijalva told him. “Epstein is like, ‘No, I’m good.'”“He seemed calm,” Grijalva said of Epstein. “He joked because he asked for a new jumper and I told him, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘This is a prison, this is what you have to do.’ Nobody else’s got a jumper, it’s not Versace,’ you know. He laughed, ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha,’ and that was it.”Grijalva said that before leaving for the weekend, he told staff several times that he would need a new cell mate when Epstein returned from a meeting with his lawyers that evening.He also told inspectors that there were several orange bedsheets in Epstein’s cell, the fabric he used to hang himself, which was because officials had failed to remove Reyes’s bedsheets when he was discharged, and that they had presumably given Epstein some extra sheets after he complained of being cold at night.“They messed up,” Grijalva said. “Sorry. It’s a big deal.”According to the Bureau of Prisons, Grijalva was still employed at the Manhattan Correctional Center and had been promoted to deputy captain.The chairman of the House Oversight Committee called Noel for an interview on March 26, after The Post reported that he had Googled Epstein and deposited mysterious cash shortly before he took his own life.Noel and Thomas were accused of falsifying records that said they checked on Epstein overnight, although investigators later learned that they failed to check on him at 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.They were fired, but criminal charges against both were dropped in 2021 by Obama-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres.